


Agent Games

by Crowgirl



Series: Timeline [2]
Category: James Bond (Craig movies)
Genre: Bathtubs, Christmas, Christmas Party, Cuddling & Snuggling, Domestic, Domestic Fluff, Emotional Constipation, Emotionally Repressed, Established Relationship, F/F, Feels, Jealousy, M/M, Not Beta Read, Public Display of Affection, Showing Off
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-16
Updated: 2018-11-01
Packaged: 2019-06-11 14:39:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,872
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15317670
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Crowgirl/pseuds/Crowgirl
Summary: Bloody man. Just because he’d known Q as a child, he thinks he has some sort ofclaimon him.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Catchclaw](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Catchclaw/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Have a Very Merry 00 Christmas!](https://archiveofourown.org/works/600543) by [sirona](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sirona/pseuds/sirona). 



James watches 008 watch Q. 

Q is happily involved in some version of tiddlywinks with Moneypenny and several other Q Branch operatives and doesn’t seem aware of either of them. 008, on the other hand, is practically lashing his tail as he watches Q successfully flip a pound coin into a plastic cup; Q shoots his arms in the air like a football player celebrating a goal and Eve applauds on the table with one hand and hands him a shot of brightly colored liquor with the other. Q knocks back the shot with surprising aplomb and drops the glass back in her hand.

Bond makes himself look away, glance around the room; he’s safe here, he isn’t worried about that but there’s something truly odd about attending a party at MI6. It had been Moneypenny’s idea, he’s fairly sure -- her and probably 004; she seems like the sort to egg on the idea just for the hell of it. Maybe 005, too; the bar seems to have a touch of her hand about it. Not too much of a touch, he hopes, looking at his glass. He doesn’t think there’s anyone here she has an active grudge against and he can’t remember having pissed her off lately.

There’s another burst of cheering from the game table and he looks back in time to see Q bowing left and right, evidently having won whatever was happening; Eve claps him on the back and hands him another shot. Bond watches her look up and realise that 004 is watching her from the bar. Moneypenny leans in and mutters something in Q’s ear; he nods distractedly and she slides away towards the bar; 004 smiles and shifts to make room for her. 008 takes this as his cue and almost _slithers_ off his stool and towards Q. 

Bloody man. Just because he’d known Q as a child -- when, Q has told Bond, he’s fairly sure James would have tossed him off the Vauxhall Bridge just to shut him up -- he thinks he has some sort of _claim_ on him. 

‘James! Want to play?’ Q is waving the plastic cup at him and James realises he’s staring as though Q were a mark. 

No, he really doesn’t, but he also doesn’t like the smirk on 008’s face so he nods and makes his way over. The other players, three young men from Q Branch whose names he’s forgotten if he ever knew, melt out of his way and Q grins at him, flushed, clearly a little drunk, and delightfully happy. That’s something James has never failed to appreciate about Q: when he’s happy, he’s _happy,_ he’s all in, there’s nothing held back as a tease. Not that the man can’t be a most aggravating tease when he’s a mind to be. 

‘How do we play?’ 008 inquires before Bond can. Bloody irritating man: taking advantage of the question to lean in closer against Q’s shoulder.

‘Whoever makes the longest flip gets the drink,’ Q says, waving a hand at the table. There are several plastic cups at various distances from the end of the table where they’re standing and Q plants the pound coin back on the table with a certain amount of tipsy ceremony. ‘Unless you’ve got something better than this, of course.’

Bond half-expects 008 to pull a condom out of his pocket and offer that, but the man just smirks instead. ‘I wouldn’t dream of questioning your choices, darling.’

 _Darling._ Dear Lord. James doesn’t roll his eyes, but it costs him some effort. 

‘New player goes first,’ Q says, offering the second coin to James with a ceremonious turn of the wrist. 

‘Aren’t I a new player as well?’ 008 says plaintively, picking up one of the other coins and flipping it across his knuckles. 

James takes the coin before Q can say anything and bounces it in his palm, giving 008 a smile he’s been told is shark-like. ‘Shall we flip for it?’ 

008 pales slightly and shakes his head. ‘Age before beauty.’ 

Q laughs -- or snorts -- and turns it into a cough, catching James’s arm and pulling him into position at the end of the table. Normally James objects to being manhandled but Q touches him with the ease of familiarity and he enjoys having 008 see that. 

‘Like this--’ Q’s breath is warm and liquor-scented against his cheek as he leans in to arrange the coins under James’s fingers. 

‘Who thought this up?’ James inquires as he eyes the cups.

‘Eve. Who else? There.’ Q stands back, dusting his hands.

James considers the weight of the coin in his fingers for a minute, then crouches down at the edge of the table, adjusts the position of the lower coin slightly, and snaps the top coin down sharply. The lower coin pops into the air and drops neatly into the third farthest cup and James stands up. 

Q applauds and plucks the coin back out of the cup. ‘Well done! MI6’s finest does not disappoint.’ He leans across James to hand the coin to 008 and James is not imagining the brief pressure of Q’s body against him -- when he moves to stand out of 008’s way, Q catches his elbow and tugs him in his direction so they end up shoulder-to-shoulder watching 008 make a great show of taking off his jacket and cuffing his sleeves. 

008’s coin lands neatly in the farthest cup and he turns to Q with a preening grin. ‘What did you say I won?’

‘A shot,’ Eve says flatly, coming back to the table with her hands full of glasses and 004 at her elbow, equally laden. She manages to put the glasses down on the table without spilling any: they’re all different and all brightly colored and remind James vaguely of medicine he took as a child. 

‘Which should I pick?’ 008 appeals to Q who taps a considering finger against his lower lip and plucks out a glass filled with something absolutely clear. 008 takes it, smirking again, and tosses it back. Whatever it is, it makes him blink and catch his breath with a start but Q is already picking out another glass, handing it to James with a smile. 

‘I thought you said the _winner_ got a drink,’ 008 says, his voice a little thready.

‘Yes, but I like James,’ Q says, his smile growing broader as he meets James’s eyes.

James takes the glass, knocks it back, and drops it back on the table without looking away from Q. 

‘You two, honestly…’ James hears Moneypenny mutter and then he has his arms full of something soft and woolly. ‘Take him home before you both embarrass yourselves.’ 

Q takes his coat and pulls it on, then stands and waits for James to wrap his ridiculously overlong scarf around him. James does so, aware that Q is watching him, still smiling although the expression is softer around the edges now, and that 008 is watching them both which is much more the way James would prefer to have things.


	2. Chapter 2

James closes Q’s door firmly and goes around to the other side. Sliding in, he leans forward long enough to give the driver the address, then leans back. He doesn’t usually bother with the cars the Ministry keeps on hand but M had been quite clear about this: no agents were to be rescued from the Thames regardless of the circumstances. Normally James enjoys driving himself but the Aston is in the shop and he hasn’t settled on another car yet so this will have to do. Not that the backseat of a Mercedes is really _suffering,_ but it’s a little -- stolid. Reminds him of M, somehow.

The garage door slides open, letting in a flood of wan sunlight and the driver pulls out onto the side lane that will take them to a main road. Beside him, Q mutters something about ‘bloody light’ and sinks further down in his seat, slouching against James.

‘Hangover setting in already?’

Q groans. ‘I wish it would.’

‘Morning that bad?’ James lifts his arm a little cautiously and Q immediately slides across the seat, pillowing his head on James’s shoulder with a half-stifled sigh. James glances up to meet the driver’s eyes in the rearview window. She’s trying unsuccessfully to smother a grin; she manages it only barely as she meets James’s eye and reaches back one-handed to slide the dividing glass in place. 

Q doesn’t notice or, if he does, doesn’t care; James isn’t sure which makes him lightheaded. He would never have thought that someone _trusting_ him would be this -- shocking. Winning trust is what he does every day; it's just a job skill, something he happens to be good at. He hadn't really thought about how little of himself it involves: it isn't _him_ smiling at the right moment or knowing the right name, the right place to push. It's just -- what he does.

This -- Q being willing to be _seen_ with him, _actually_ him and not the part he’s playing this week, this day, this hour -- makes his chest hurt. He reaches up and tugs a fold of his coat forward so Q has somewhere slightly more comfortable to rest his temple.

‘Have you ever tried to teach a roomful of recruits the basics of email security in under an hour?’

‘No.’

‘Well, I have and no hangover can compare.’ Q groans again and reaches up to pinch at his eyes. ‘Just -- bloody _awful._ Do you know that half of them were just going to _keep_ their old accounts? Just -- keep them! Open!’

‘Can’t they?’

Q cranes back and glares up at James. ‘You’re taking the piss.’

James holds up his free hand. ‘I’m not, honestly. The only account I’ve ever had is the Ministry’s. Bar the burners, of course.’ 

Q studies him for a moment through narrowed eyes and apparently decides either that James is being honest or that he doesn’t care and curls back against James’s shoulder. ‘Well, no, they can’t. I may be pretty good but even I can’t lock down God knows how many dozen Gmail accounts twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.’

‘Isn’t that the sort of thing we’re supposed to be paying them for anyway? The email people, I mean.’

Q shrugs, his shoulder digging momentarily into the soft space below James’s elbow. ‘Then it’s just a matter of waiting until someone comes along with a few more zeroes on their cheque than ours.’ 

The car slows to a stop at a red light and James peers out the window. The dusk is coming on quickly; clouds have been moving in all afternoon and it looks like snow any moment. There’s no wind; everything has that still, expectant air it gets before a storm and James thinks of his house and bites the inside of his lip.

‘What’s wrong?’ Q’s thumb touches his chin, gently eases his lip free, and strokes over it.

 _I’ve never actually brought anyone back to mine before,_ James thinks and wonders if this is what hysteria is like. He hasn’t actually had a _mine_ to bring anyone back to since university -- and that had been a rather unpleasant dormitory. He could have gotten himself a flat any time, of course, but what would be the point? He spent more time out of the country than in it and the Ministry was perfectly happy to put him up when he happened to land in London for a few days. And even if the Ministry hadn’t been willing, somehow, magically, Q was. 

‘James?’ Q pushes himself up, one hand on James’s thigh and James realises he hasn’t actually answered the question.

‘Nothing.’ 

Q scowls at him. ‘We’ve talked about how you’re a dreadful liar, yes?’

James laughs and pushes an errant bit of hair off Q’s forehead. ‘We’ve talked about your enormous ego, yes?’

‘Hm. Well. Yes.’ Q gives with the gentle tug of James’s hand on his arm and folds against him again. ‘But if I didn’t have an ego the size of Cheltenham, I’d’ve never believed you were coming on to me.’ 

‘As I remember, I had to spend quite some time proving the point.’

‘Mm. P’r’aps not Chelten’am, then.’ Q pauses and yawns. ‘Maybe...maybe Chiswick?’

‘Are those two different places?’

Q snorts, then yawns again. ‘You really have to get out more, James.’ 

* * *

Q is mostly asleep by the time the car turns into the final drive and pulls up before the old stone house. The dividing window slides back again and James notices the driver keeping her eyes carefully turned away. She taps on the glass gently. ‘We’re here, sirs.’ 

‘And only one of us is asleep.’ James touches Q’s arm. ‘Wakey, wakey.’

‘Bug’r off.’ 

‘Not just now, darling.’

Q groans and awkwardly shoves himself up to sitting, wiping his hair off his face with the back of one gloved hand. ‘Where the hell are we anyway? We should’ve been at mine ages ago.’

James _hmms_ noncommittally and steps out of the car as the driver opens the door. She’s a silhouette in the rapidly falling night, visible largely because the neighbors have a rather ostentatiously antique cast-iron lamp on their garden wall that casts a yellow glow. 

Q scrambles out of the backseat, grabbing the top of the door to help himself. 

‘Anything else I can do for you, sirs?’ The driver asks, slamming the door shut briskly and clapping her hands together.

‘No, nothing, thank you.’ James reaches out to shake her hand -- she’s obviously not expecting either the gesture or the folded note he presses into her palm. She recovers, sliding her hand into her pocket. ‘Thank you very much, sir.’ 

‘Not at all. Good evening.’

‘And to you, sir.’

‘Hang on--’ Q’s been staring up at the house and now, as the driver walks back to her own open door and slides into the driver’s seat, he waves a hand at her. ‘--hang on a minute, this is the wrong place--’

‘It isn’t,’ James says over the _clunk_ of the driver’s door closing.

‘It bloody well is-- I said bloody _wait_ are you--’ 

The car’s engine revs smoothly and it pulls away, vanishing into the road.

‘--deaf,’ Q finishes. ‘Hell.’ He starts patting his pockets, stopping only when James rattles his keys. 

‘Shall we go in? Or would you prefer to stand out in the snow?’

Q looks from the keys to the house to James’s face to the keys again. ‘James, what’s going on?’

‘I thought you might help me housewarm,’ James says, marvelling that the shaking he can feel quite clearly doesn’t translate to his voice. 

Q blinks and turns to look up at the house again. ‘This is _yours?’_

‘No, I thought a spot of light housebreaking would round the evening off nicely.’ James dangles the keys between finger and thumb. 

Q rolls his eyes and grabs the keys, peering at them in his palm as if expecting them to transform into something else. ‘You never said.’ 

‘Yes, well. There didn’t seem to be much to say about it.’ James digs his hands into his pockets. ‘It’s not as if buying a house is very exciting.’ 

‘But --’ Q bounces the keys in his hand, tosses them up, and catches them. ‘But you don’t have a house. You don’t even have a room.’ He steps around so he’s directly in front of James. ‘We always go back to mine.’ 

‘And you hate it -- you’ve said so.’

‘So because I hate my flat but I'm a lazy git and can never be bothered to do anything about it you went and bought a _house!’_

James swallows hard against something that feels very like anxiety. Somehow in imagining how this would play out, he had forgotten Q’s inability to leave a question unasked. ‘Well, I’ll need somewhere to live, won’t I?’

‘Will you?’ There’s a crease between Q’s eyebrows and he’s staring at James as if he’s a code.

‘Can’t keep saving the world forever.’

Q turns, stepping back so they’re side by side, regarding the stone of the house as snow begins to fall. ‘So...what? You’re going to retire to the suburbs and grow roses?’

‘I always fancied peonies.’ 

Q barks a laugh and, before James can say anything else, Q’s embraced him, tugged him into a kiss, pressed their cheeks, their foreheads together. ‘You _silly_ fucking sod.’

‘You like it?’ James says, a little breathless in the warm space between them.

‘I like _you,_ you arsehole. I don’t care if I stay in my grotty flat for the rest of fucking _time_ so long as you’re there, too.’ 

James has to wait a minute to make sure his voice will be steady; he’s sure his hands aren’t, but Q has them in his so firmly it probably doesn’t matter. ‘That’s as may be, but personally I appreciate a bathroom where the mold on the tub hasn’t achieved sentience.’ 

‘There’s a tub?’ 

‘Quite a large one.’

Q pulls James’s arm under his, weaving their fingers together, and starts towards the front door. ‘Excellent.’


	3. Chapter 3

‘I have wondered,’ Q says, sliding down against the curve of the porcelain and dipping his hand in the [amber colored water,](https://www.lushusa.com/cinders/SNOWINV02911.html) lifting it to watch the drops of water sparkle off his fingertips. ‘If you ever thought of doing this with my predecessor.’

James’s roar of laughter is entirely unexpected and Q is startled into trying to sit up abruptly which only causes a slosh of bathwater over the rim of the tub and onto the bathroom floor and James grabbing at him to keep upright. 

When the water settles back and the echoes of James laughing have died away, Q finds himself tucked neatly between James’s knees, his back against James’s chest, James’s hands linked over his own abdomen. ‘Was it that funny?’

James snorts in his ear. ‘Darling -- your predecessor was a poet, a warrior, and a gentleman.’

‘So someone else got in before you.’

‘He was married before he joined the service. A very beautiful young woman -- he showed me her picture once.’ James’s hands tighten over Q’s ribs and Q twists himself slightly so he can rest his cheek on James’s wet shoulder; he can hear James’s heartbeat, a faint, steady pulse. He slips his hand under the water, tracing the lines of old scars over James’s ribs.

James drops his head, nuzzling through Q’s hair, and it takes Q a minute to realise that James is shaking his head. ‘I don’t think he thought of another person after she died.’

Q swallows. ‘Well, don’t expect me to go celibate after you pop off.’ 

James chuckles. ‘Perish the thought.’ 

‘But don’t.’ Q shoves himself up, planting one hand on the back of the tub, the other on James’s chest. ‘Don’t you fucking dare. You hear me?’

James reaches out and traces dripping fingers down Q’s cheek, along his throat, over the hollow of his collarbone. ‘I wouldn’t dream of it.’


	4. Chapter 4

James wakes up when Q slips from the bed but he doesn’t move. He’s too comfortable where he is, held down by a pleasant weight of sheet and duvet and an extra blanket because Q runs cold and even with James next to him, he feels the chill. 

James stays where he is, one arm crooked under his pillow, the other loose over his hip, and listens to the sounds of Q moving around the bathroom: the toilet flushing, the sink running, cabinet doors opening and closing, a _hmm_ of surprise at something found. 

He expects Q to come straight back to bed -- after all, they’ve nothing to do today -- but he hears Q pad across the bedroom floor and the rattle of the curtain rings instead. He cracks open an eye and blinks a few times until he bring Q into focus, standing with the curtains in one hand, silhouetted against the pale winter light coming in over the back garden.

‘Christ, James, what did you _buy.’_

James gives up the pretence of sleep and rolls to his back, stretching himself luxuriously in a manner that would usually get Q’s attention. ‘Something wrong, dear?’

‘It’s like some kind of Dickensian wet dream out there.’ 

James pushes back the covers and drops his feet to the floor; it’s something of a measure of how being with Q has shifted his perspective, he thinks, that he lets himself notice that the floor is cold and his left ankle still hurts from a vicious twist on his last day in Beirut. He ignores it now and walks across to the window, pressing himself along the lines of Q’s back, sliding his hands over the sharp arch of Q’s hipbones.

Q hmms again and lets himself lean back against James, his head resting comfortably in the notch of James’s shoulder. His free hand comes back and finds the curve of James’s thigh, gently stroking up and down a few times before settling just below his hip. 

James drops his head, lets himself nose through Q’s hair for a moment, smelling shampoo and sweat and the tang of dye from the inside of that wretched old woolly hat Q absolutely refuses to give up. Q's thumb rubs over the rise of his thigh muscle and James lets himself bask in the uncomplicatedness of Q's affection for his body. James likes himself like this, too: likes the illusion of being slightly bigger than Q, stronger than him, able to hold him safe. ‘What’s wrong with the back of my house, I’d like to know.’

‘Well, _nothing--’_ Q jerks his chin at it but doesn’t otherwise move. He habitually sleeps in boxers and a t-shirt; both are now rumpled and warm from his body and James slips one hand under the front of his shirt and the other under the elastic of his boxers, pulling Q back against himself. Q clears his throat. ‘But I didn’t realise you were going for the All In English Heritage prize.’

James glances up out the window and has to admit there’s something in what Q’s saying. The back garden isn’t enormous but in the fog that had settled in after the snow cleared, it looks almost like the stage dressing of an English winter garden. Everything is lightly draped in white; the dark green of the holly bushes shows through as does the stone of the wall that surrounds the garden. Everything else is made rounded and shapeless by the snow. The fog softens outlines, makes it look almost as though the garden doesn’t have a bounding wall at its foot, as though it might just continue on into the distance. 

‘I hadn’t considered it.’ James arches himself against Q’s back. ‘Perhaps I should.’

‘It might fund all your peonies,’ Q agrees, twisting his hand to cup around the back of James’s thigh, a silent request to get closer. 

James hisses, resisting the urge to yank up Q’s shirt and grind against the small of his back until they’re both hard, both gasping. ‘Come back to bed.’

‘But you’re showing me your garden.’

‘Fuck the garden.’ James tweaks the curtain free of Q’s grasp while Q’s still laughing at him. 

**Author's Note:**

> I imagine Q slipping 008 a shot of [arak](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arak_\(drink\)): I can get a hangover from being in the same room with a capped bottle. I imagine he gives Bond something that tastes much nicer.


End file.
